


A Queen Twice Over

by FalconHonour



Category: The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Alternate History, Anglo/French alliance, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 16,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29720004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalconHonour/pseuds/FalconHonour
Summary: Abbeville, October 1514. On her way to meet her new stepmother, Claude, Duchess of Valois and Brittany, dies of a miscarriage brought on by an overturned litter.Paris, January 1515. Louis XII dies of gout, leaving behind a young, beautiful widow, twenty-two-year-old Mary of England.The new King, Francis I, knows a good thing when he sees one and wastes no time in wedding Mary, making her a Queen twice over.And that, in itself, is enough to alter the balance of power in sixteenth-century Christendom irrevocably…
Relationships: Anne Boleyn/Francis d' St Pol, Marguerite d'Alencon/Charles V, Mary Tudor of France/Francis I of France
Comments: 100
Kudos: 57





	1. I: May-August 1514

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheAwesomeWriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAwesomeWriter/gifts).



> For TheAwesomeWriter, who prompted me to move this over from AH.com :) This story is something a little different in style from what I usually write, because it's told in a series of short chapters, so I'm hoping I'll be able to update frequently, even once I've caught up to Alternate History. Enjoy!

**St Germain-de-Laye, May 1514**

  
They don’t make the most prepossessing of couples as they emerge from the chapel door, blinking in the bright May sunlight.  
  
Oh, the groom is striking enough. His complexion might be a little swarthier than is held to be ideal, his nose a little too hooked, but his height, shapely turned calf and the lithe controlled energy he carries himself with, more than make up for that.  
  
The young woman on his arm, however, only suffers by comparison. She might be glittering in silver damask embroidered with dark blue fleur-de-lys, and wearing a headdress encrusted with tiny chips of sapphire, but not even the richest fabrics in Christendom can hide her short stature, her weak chin, or her hunched, twisted shoulders. The young Duchess of Brittany and Valois is not, nor has ever been, the kind of girl chroniclers fete for their beauty.  
  
But then, she doesn’t have to be. Claude of France’s lack of looks don’t matter. Not when she is the greatest heiress of her generation and brings her husband all of Brittany as her dowry.  
  
Brittany, after all, is the reason her father, King Louis XII of France has arranged this match in the first place. If the only thing recommending Claude were her royal blood, she’d have been married off abroad, the way her younger sister Renee, still a child in the nursery, will be one day. But Brittany is too grand a prize to let slip through one’s fingers. As such, the young man at Claude’s side, handing her into the litter and brushing her cheek lightly with his lips as he does so, is her father’s cousin and heir, Francis, Duke of Valois.  
  
In Salic Law-governed France, it is he who will sit the throne after Louis. Claude will be little more than a vessel for him, a trophy at his side. As his Queen, she will lend his rule legitimacy in the dynastic sense; acting as the living, breathing link between the old dynasty and the new. God willing, she will also give him a son: a son to rule both France and Brittany, thereby completing her father’s long-held dream of merging her mother’s independent Duchy with the French Crown.  
  
Claude settles herself back into her cushioned litter, only years of royal training stopping her from groaning in relief as the padded fabric behind her soothes her aching back.  
  
Beside her, Francis spins on his heel as something moves in the corner of his vision. Sportsman’s training coming to the fore, he snatches the sprig of heather from the air and raises it to his lips, before tucking it into the brim of his feathered hat and blowing a kiss to the fair-haired girl who threw it.  
  
The crowd goes wild, cheering all the louder as Francis mounts his horse, preparing to lead the Court in his and Claude’s wedding procession.  
  
Even as they shout acclaim, however, the experienced matrons in the crowd are eyeing Claude’s waist, hoping and praying it won’t be long before their young Duchess grows stout with child.  
  
They don’t say anything. They don’t need to. Claude is a woman too. Some things transcend the social strata, no matter how wide the gulf in rank. Closing her eyes for a brief moment, Claude adds her prayers to theirs.  
  
“ _Sweet Jesus, let me quicken soon. In your Mercy, only_ _let me quicken.”_

* * *

Fortunately, Claude’s prayers – and those of most of France – are answered in what is, relatively speaking, the blink of an eye. Francis’s seed must catch on their very wedding night, for she swells with child within weeks, prompting her young husband to show her off at every opportunity, crowing with pride at this all-too-obvious sign of his virility.   
  
“A boy for France!” he tells anyone who will listen, over and over again, “You see, my wife and I know our duty. We’ll have a boy for France before the year is out!”  
  
In the cloistered, sycophantic environment that is their country home, whence they have retreated – Francis for the hunting, Claude to escape the blistering suffocation that is Paris in the summer heat – no one thinks to point out that, as there are only five months left in the year, that is actually impossible. Their household simply fall over themselves to assure Francis that his coming child will be the lustiest boy France and Brittany have ever seen.  
  
And then the news comes. Claude’s father has made peace with the young King across the Channel, Henry VIII of England. He has pledged himself to marry Henry’s teenage sister, the Lady Mary.  
  
The Duc de Longueville has embarked for England to stand in King Louis’s place at a proxy wedding and Francis and Claude are being called to Court to head the new Queen’s welcoming party.


	2. II: September 1514

**Leeds Castle, September 1514**

  
Leeds Castle, situated on its own moated island in the middle of the Kentish countryside, is one of the prettiest castles in England. Every time he comes here, Henry wonders why he doesn’t come more often, particularly given how good the hunting is in the area.  
  
Tonight, however, he is distracted, hardly able to take in the castle’s beauty, let alone admire it. This is their final stop before they move on to Dover, where his sister Mary will embark for her new life as Queen of France. And while their departure is still a few days away, Henry can already sense the parting tugging at him, threatening to tear his heart in two.  
  
Oh, he’ll never admit it. A King can’t be seen to be weak, and besides, it’s a glittering match. He can’t hope to do better for his little sister, particularly not now that the Burgundian whippersnapper has had the cheek to repudiate her, but still. Part of Henry aches at losing Mary to a foreign match. She is his favourite sister, his _baby_ sister. They’ve had no-one but each other these past ten years – since Margaret was sent up to Scotland, consumption took Arthur and Mother died birthing their youngest sister Katherine. Henry can’t bring himself to imagine what his life will be like without Mary at the heart of it.  
  
Mary feels his pain too, he knows. Why else would his usually gay sister have slipped away from the celebrations being held in her honour and sought the peace of the gardens in the evening twilight, when she usually thrives on being the centre of attention?  
  
As if his thoughts have conjured Mary out of thin air, Henry suddenly sees her sitting by the fountain, glowering into its spray of water.  
  
“Sister!” he calls, beckoning, “Walk with me!”  
  
Mary looks up, curtsies. In an instant, she is at his side, threading her arm through his with the intimacy that only a sister can.  
  
They walk through the gardens in comfortable silence. There is no need for words between siblings as close as they are.  
  
Yet Henry breaks it anyway. How can he not, when he is bursting with pride at what Longueville told him this afternoon?  
  
“Longueville told me in our audience this afternoon that King Louis was much pleased by the miniature you sent him with your last letter. His Majesty is said to be in awe of your beauty and longing for the day when you will ornament his Court as its most beloved Queen.”  
  
Henry expects Mary to preen at the words. She’s always loved praise; right from when she was old enough to know what words meant.  
  
It is with consternation, therefore, that he feels her stop and wrench her arm from his.  
  
“The King of France is an old man!” she spits, “He wouldn’t know what beauty was if it jumped up and bit him on the nose!”  
  
“Mary!” Henry is aghast to hear his younger sister speak so vehemently. It’s not like her at all. She’s always been so sweet; so gentle. Before he can react, however, Mary has fallen to her knees before him.  
  
“Henry, I beg you. As you love me, don’t make me go through with this!”  
  
“Not this again!” Henry groans. Frustration wells in him as he realises they are about to tread the path of an argument they have had a thousand times before. He reaches down and pulls Mary roughly to her feet, “How many times, Mary? It’s done! You’ve married Louis by proxy. Resign yourself to it, as every Princess, every royal lady, has ever done before you.”  
  
“Proxy marriages can be overturned!” Mary exclaims, bright eyes flashing with angry desperation, “Please, brother, petition the Church to overturn mine!”  
  
“No!” Henry snarls, spinning on his heel out of Mary’s reach as she stretches out an imploring hand, “I need this alliance, Mary, and you are going to do your duty and secure it for me, as you have been born and raised to do. I’ll hear no more on the matter. Christ, Margaret didn’t complain half so much when Father shipped her north to marry the Scottish barbarian!”  
  
“Margaret was a child! She was barely thirteen, she had no idea in her head other than what Father and Grandmother put there! But I do! I’m old enough to know my own mind and I know I’ll die if you force me to marry a man old enough to be my grandfather!”  
  
Mary tosses her bright head along with her fierce words, her copper waves streaming out behind her like crackling fire. She clings to the ferocity coursing through her veins. It is the only thing stopping her from bursting into hot, angry tears.  
  
“I’ll never ask it of you again.”  
  
She freezes at the words. This is new. In all their arguments over the matter of her French match, Henry’s never offered her this bargain before. Despite herself, she lifts her eyes to meet her brother’s, a question rising to her lips.  
  
She doesn’t get a chance to ask it. No sooner has she looked at him than Henry is rushing on, words spilling from his lips impulsively.  
  
“You’re right. Louis _is_ old enough to be your grandfather. But that only means you’re certain to outlive him. And if you wed him without further protest, then, when he does die, when your mourning is over and you come home, I swear on Mama’s soul that I’ll never force you into another match again. Should you wish to marry again, your second husband will be your choice. Yours and yours alone.”  
  
The words fall like stones into the heavy silence that stretches between them. The siblings stare at each other, each waiting for the other to react.  
  
Oh, if Mary were thinking clearly, she’d know that Henry doesn’t necessarily mean what he says. She’d know that he’s thinking on his feet, using whatever blandishments he can think of to get her to agree to the French match – to stop her balking at the last moment.  
  
However, she isn’t thinking clearly. Her heart has leapt at the unusual freedom her brother is offering her and she can’t see past it. To be allowed to pick her own husband, even if she’s still young and fertile when she’s widowed… it’s a luxury unheard for a girl of her rank. In that heady moment, she can’t see past it.  
  
So when Henry murmurs, “Do we have a bargain, sweet Mary?” she only nods, her mind already full of visions of this time next year – it won’t be any longer than that, surely? – when she’ll be home in England, free to marry whomever she pleases.  
  
Squealing in delighted thanks, she leaps at Henry, throwing her arms around his neck as though she is a little girl again. He catches her, delighted to have made his baby sister smile again.


	3. III: October 1514

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm giving you daily updates of this until I can get you up to speed with what's on AH.com, after which things will probably slow to once or twice a week, the same as I do on Alternate History. Enjoy the speed while you've got it! :)

**Abbeville, October 1514**

  
“Pah! This English Princess is bringing us English weather as her dowry!” Francis spits the words out at the same time as a mouthful of muddy rainwater kicked up by the mount of his dripping standard-bearer.  
  
His shouted half-jest reaches the ears of his companion, Thomas de Foix, Lord of Lescun, whose lips twist into a wry smile.  
  
“Not far now, Your Grace!” he roars back, but before he can say any more, he is cut off by a sickening, tearing crack from behind them.  
  
Acting on instinct, Francis wrenches his horse to a standstill and spins in the saddle.  
  
The next few moments seem to happen at half speed.  
  
A great bough falls from a tree, thundering to the ground so close to Claude’s litter it hits the guard leading the mules bearing it, dashing him from his saddle.  
  
Maddened by the noise, the rain and the wind, and suddenly free of the man fighting to control them, the mules bolt in various directions, kicking their way free of the traces as they do so.  
  
Claude’s cushioned litter can’t withstand the turmoil and it turns over, tossing the four-and-a-half months pregnant Duchess out into the road in an undignified heap.  
  
Terror courses through Francis. Pregnancy aside, Claude has never been strong. Indeed, she was sick with an ague not even a fortnight ago. It’s only her strong sense of duty to her father that has got her here at all. And now –  
  
Without fully realising what he’s doing, Francis has thrown the reins of his terrified horse at the nearest burly guard and plunged into the melee behind him.  
  
He crashes to his knees beside Claude’s prone figure, leaning over to strike his palm sharply against her cheek, trying to slap her back into wakefulness.  
  
“Claude? Claude? Can you hear me, _ma cherie?”_  
  
“Get her to the convent! The nuns will look after her!”  
  
Suddenly, Thomas materialises at his side, bawling instructions above the howling wind. It is a shocking breach of protocol, but Francis doesn’t have time to care about that. He merely nods and snatches Claude up into his arms.  
  
She moans and stirs as he lifts her, her eyelids fluttering, and, for a moment, hope flares in his breast. If she can move like that, then, most likely, she hasn’t broken her neck. Or her back.  
  
The convent of Abbeville, their chosen shelter for the night, is no more than half a mile away. If all had gone well, then, even in this tempest, they’d have been there in minutes. Yet, running there with Claude in his arm, the rain lashing down around them, Francis swears the great stone building seems to melt into the distance like a desert mirage.  
  
By the time he is finally close enough to hammer on the porter’s gate, shouting hoarsely for help, Claude has gone limp and unmoving in his arms. She has ceased to make any sound at all, despite how much he must be jostling her.  
  
Francis’s heart catches in his throat. He’s seen enough hunting and jousting accidents to know that silence is never a good thing. Not with injuries as severe as Claude’s doubtless are.  
  
And that’s before he hands her over to Sister Ursula, who has charge of the infirmary. The portly nun tries to hide the fear in her face, but Francis isn’t blind. He can see the blood seeping into the crisp, clean linen as clearly as she can.  
  
At some point in proceedings, Claude has begun to miscarry their first-born child.


	4. IV: October 1514

**The English Channel, October 1514**

  
Mary stands in the prow of the _Katherine Philippa_ , a boat her brother had built especially for his invasion of France last spring and named for two beloved English Queens. Now, the boat comes in peace, carrying an English Princess to her destiny as Queen of France.  
  
Unfortunately, the weather doesn’t seem to agree. The wind whips around Mary, tearing at the rigging and churning up a bitter spray that soaks her to the skin.  
  
Exhilarated by it, Mary braces herself with an arm flung around the ship’s figurehead, throws her head back and laughs.  
  
How her brother will mourn if she drowns tonight! How he’ll blame himself for not listening to her, for not yielding to her pleading and letting her stay in England!  
  
“My Lady, get below _now_! As long as you stay above deck, I cannot guarantee your safety!”  
  
The captain roars at her, but Mary, reckless with youth and fury, tosses her bright head scornfully.  
  
“Don’t be absurd, Master Swinburne! Go below, where I will have no idea of what’s going on and nobody but a flock of frightened ninnies to keep me company? Never!”  
  
“You’ll do as the captain tells you!”  
  
The Duke of Suffolk fights his way towards her, straining his lungs to be heard above the wind.  
  
At the sight of him, Mary’s fury redoubles. How dare _he,_ of all men, chastise her? He, of all men, knows _why_ her French match is such purgatory to her. He knows better than anyone just what it’s costing her to even _try_ to do her duty. How _dare_ he make it all the harder by scolding her like a child?  
  
“Oh no, I will not, _Master Brandon!_ His Grace of Suffolk you may be, but I still outrank you! I am the Lady Mary of England, soon to be Queen of France! I don’t have to answer to you!”  
  
“You won’t be Queen of anywhere if you die now!”  
  
“How _dare_ you speak to me like that?! I should have your head!”  
  
Mary is lashing out and she knows it, but really? Of all the men in England, did Henry have to choose _Charles Brandon_ to be her escort? Was he trying to make the entire journey torture for her? To be in such close confines with the man she’s adored since she was sixteen, and yet to be on her way to marry another man…  
  
“I’m your escort! I’m the one who’s going to have to answer to Henry if you die! Besides which, spoiled though you are, I happen to care for you. I don’t want your blood on my hands!” Charles’s rejoinder breaks into her musings and she turns her frustrated rage on him with some relief.  
  
“Care for me, do you? You’ve a funny way of showing it, escorting me to France to marry another man! Do you not know how I feel about you?!”  
  
“I’m doing my duty! My personal feelings have nothing to do with this! Believe me, I’d rather you weren’t!”  
  
“Prove it!”  
  
Mary knows full well her words aren’t fair. She knows she is goading Charles into recklessness, but, quite frankly, she can’t bring herself to care. She stares him down, forcing her eyes open against the bitter wind, until a cloud passes over his face and he snarls under his breath.  
  
“Oh, for God’s sake! If it will get you below…”  
  
In one swift movement, he leans forward and wrenches her to him. He pounds his lips down upon hers in the most passionate kiss Mary has ever imagined receiving.  
  
She melts into him, conscious of nothing but his lips on hers…right up until the moment her plucks her from him, shoves her down on to the bed on his cabin and slams the door, locking it from the outside before she can protest.

* * *

  
The storm has blown itself out when Mary wakes the next morning. Indeed, the sky, seen from the porthole she peeps through tentatively before calling Mother Guildford to come and help her dress, is deceptively azure, with no hint of the tempest of only a few hours earlier.  
  
Mother Guildford answers her summons promptly. The older woman’s eyes widen when she realises that Mary has spent the night in Lord Suffolk's cabin, but she is loyal enough to her charge not to say a word.  
  
They transfer to a barge for the journey up the Somme to Abbeville. The weather is glorious, almost unseasonably sunny for October in Northern France, and for a brief day or two, matters are almost pleasant. Riding high on the fact that she has managed to get Charles Brandon to admit his feelings for her – the being locked in his cabin is a distasteful aftermath which Mary is refusing to admit ever happened – Mary is at her gayest and most charming. She waves and blows kisses to the peasant girls who run along the banks of the river, cheering and throwing her autumn flowers. Once, she even rises from her seat and dips into a mock curtsy to a group of youths who flourish their caps as they bow to her.  
  
The gaiety stops abruptly, however, as they pass beneath the walls of Abbeville. The tension ratchets up a notch before they have even reached the wharf, for Mary rises from her seat and retreats to her cabin, calling Mother Guildford to help her change into a gown of cream and emerald velvet.  
  
The dress is a provocative choice on Mary’s part. Green and white are the Tudor colours. Wearing it for her formal reception by the French is a not-so-subtle statement that she might be on French soil now, but she’ll be damned before she forgets her English heritage. Moreover, as Mary knows only too well, Lord Suffolk has always loved to see her in the dress.  
  
The second sign that things might not be as easy as everyone had hoped comes from the French themselves. Oh, they are there to meet Mary, as they promised they would be, but instead of wearing bright colours and bright smiles to welcome their Queen, they are all wreathed in solemnity, glittering in shades of cream and ivory so bright they hurt one’s eyes to look at.  
  
Alarmed at the sight of the royal mourning, Mary’s chamberlain takes advantage of the fact that Mary has sequestered herself with her former governess to send to the shore without a word to his young mistress. He fears that King Louis has died before Mary can so much as take her vows to her in person.  
  
He doesn’t know whether to rejoice or groan at the news that comes in return. Mary’s marriage is safe, but it will start under a cloud of gloom. The death the French grieve is not that of their King, but of his daughter. The Duchess of Brittany died of a miscarriage the very morning Mary and her entourage landed in Boulogne.


	5. V: October 1514

**Abbeville, October 1514**

  
“Madame,” Francis bows over Mary’s hand as he steps up to take her arm, his lips brushing her skin for the briefest of instants. The young man’s eyes are red and hollow with grief and sleeplessness. His dark curls leap out in contrast against his pale skin and milk white doublet.  
  
Next to him, Mary feels as gaudy as a peacock, despite the relatively simple elegance of her white and silver escarlette gown. Her tender heart clenches at his poise, wondering how he can find the determination to escort her down the aisle so soon after the Duchess of Brittany’s death.  
  
“Francis…” she starts, unable to find the words, “Claude… I mean… I am sorry. It isn’t seemly we should be doing this so soon after your wife’s death. If you wish, I can petition the King…”  
  
“ _Non, Madame,”_ Francis cuts across her stuttering gently, “I thank you, but it is not necessary. Claude, of all people, understood the importance of a Dauphin. She would not have wanted her father to delay his marriage on her account. Besides, King Louis has consulted the bishops and obtained the necessary dispensation. After all, this is naught but a confirmation of the vows in person. In law, Your Grace has been Queen of France since Lord Longueville said the vows in my father’s place in London. Now, come, His Majesty is waiting.”  
  
With that, Francis tucks her hand firmly into the crook of his elbow, and clicks his fingers for her ladies to form up around them.  
  
Mary’s heart sinks into her boots at the realisation that there is no escape, but in the face of such heartbreakingly poised gallantry, there is nothing she can do. As Francis has just pointed out, there is nothing in canon law forbidding the celebration of an already legalised marriage whilst a country is in mourning, as long as the ceremony is not the remarriage of the bereaved spouse. Particularly not when there are succession issues at stake.  
  
Her every inch is quivering with awareness – of Francis’s warm strength under her hand, of the way her train whispers against the ground as she walks, of the way she longs to turn and cling to Charles Brandon, screaming that she will marry him and no one else, but she betrays none of that. She is a Tudor, a daughter of England. Hiding her true feelings has been taught to her from the cradle. She walks to her marriage – and to Louis of France’s bed – in a manner her mother would be proud of, with all the dignity she can muster. With all the dignity of a Queen.


	6. VI: October 1514 - January 1515

**Abbeville, October 1514**

  
_A French Queen must have French attendants._ Mary has always known that.  
  
Yet, somehow, despite that knowledge, despite being only too aware that Louis has never fully approved of the ladies that Henry and Katherine chose to accompany her to France, particularly not Jane Popincourt, whose former flirtation with the Duc de Longueville is something of an open secret, she has always envisioned herself creating something of an English enclave at the heart of her marital court, as Katherine and her ladies have created a miniature Spain in Henry’s London palaces. Most importantly, whenever she has imagined her household abroad, she has assumed that her former governess, Mother Guildford, will be at its head.  
  
As such, the news that her English attendants are to pack their bags and prepare to leave with the envoys that escorted her to her marriage, not even a week after her final, formal wedding, comes as a rude awakening.  
  
Shock coursing through her, Mary flies down the passage connecting her rooms to Louis’s.  
  
“How can you take Mother Guildford from me? How am I supposed to know how to behave if she’s not here to guide me? You promised my brother I could have English ladies about me as your Queen! You _promised!”_  
  
The words are out of her mouth before the door has even crashed against the wall behind her.  
  
Louis, who is with his ministers, blinks at her forceful entrance, but has enough presence of mind to say nothing until he has dismissed the men around him, steered her to a chair by the fire and had his page pour them both a cup of hot mulled cider. Only then does he turn to her and sigh, “Ah, _ma cherie,_ how young you are!”  
  
What follows is the most uncomfortable hour of Mary’s life. Having grown up as her father’s youngest and favourite daughter, as the delicate little girl who was orphaned far too young and whom her father dreaded losing, to say nothing of being her brother’s cherished little sister, Mary is used to tears and temper, pouts and pleading getting her whatever she desires, particularly when such tactics are coupled with charming and cajoling.  
  
Louis, however, is all but unmoved by the deployment of these weapons, no matter how hard she tries. The only concession he will make is to allow the two young Boleyn sisters, fourteen-year-old Mary and seven-year-old Anne, to stay. After all, their father is a regular envoy to the French Court. Not allowing them to remain in Mary’s household would raise any number of awkward questions.  
  
Mary considers writing to her brother, pleading with him to intervene for the sake of the others too, but there isn’t time. Louis is determined to dismiss her English ladies as soon as he possibly can, ostensibly so that they can travel before the winter storms get too bad.  
  
Mary is only too aware that Louis really only wants her English ladies gone so that he can mould her into the image of the French Queen he thinks she ought to be, but there is nothing she can do. She’s said her vows. Louis rules her now. All she can do is bid the departing ladies farewell, though she takes a certain spiteful pleasure in doing so lavishly, paying them each a gold angel for each of the nine weeks they have been in her service. She also gives each of them a letter to take back to England, asking Henry and Katherine to either arrange marriages for the girls or to allow them new posts at Court, so they might not suffer for their dismissal. She has every hope her brother and sister will do as she asks. After all, Katherine is heavily pregnant. Surely at least some of her forsaken maids will be able to find places in the newest Prince or Princess’s household.  
  
For Mother Guildford, she pleads for an annuity rather than a new post at Court, knowing the older woman would rather retire than take up a new position at Henry’s young and lively Court.  
  
On the morning of her English ladies’ departure, Mary accompanies them to the courtyard, knowing it is beneath her as a Queen to do so, but not caring a whit. She stands watching them leave, straining her eyes to see, until the last litter has become no more than a speck of dust on the road to Calais.  
  
When she returns to her rooms, Mary and Anne Boleyn trailing behind her, her eyes are burning. All she wants to do is collapse on to her bed and weep herself sick.  
  
Instead, she finds a young woman with hazel eyes and tawny hair curtsying before her. Francis’s sister, Marguerite.  
  
“Madame de Alencon,” she greets, knowing even as she speaks, that her voice is heavy with the effort of being polite.  
  
“Your Grace,” Marguerite says softly, “My brother has sent me to you. He knows how much the loss of your English ladies must grieve you when you are so new to France and how we do things here. He bid me come to you and be to Your Grace the older sister I am to him. The older sister Your Grace lost to a foreign match at far too young an age.”  
  
At the blatant sympathy in Marguerite’s voice, Mary can’t help herself. Heedless of anyone else in the room, she throws herself at Marguerite, and, as the older woman’s arms close round her, bursts into tears.

* * *

From that day forward, the young Queen and the Duchess of Alencon are all but joined at the hip. It is rare to see one without the other, and their households are so intermingled, they may as well be one.  
  
The two bright young woman glitter at the centre of the French Court, two thirds of a sparkling triumvirate.  
  
The third member of their ‘Petite Bande’, as King Louis affectionately terms it, is Marguerite’s beloved brother, the Duke of Valois. Who else could it be? Who else is of the right age, blood and rank to spend almost every hour of the day with the Queen and the Duchess of Alencon without too many eyebrows being raised?  
  
Even so, there are a few mutterings concerning Mary’s conduct with Francis, considering she is another man’s wife. Fortunately, Louis is generous enough towards his young wife not to pay them any heed. He knows women well enough to know that an old man like him can’t have been Mary’s ideal husband, and, despite her somewhat overindulged behaviour, he’s fond enough of her that he doesn’t want to see her robbed of what pleasure she can find at his staid Court. Besides, Mary needs to know how things work in France, and Marguerite and Francis are eminently suitable to teach her. Marguerite is a canny, beautiful girl, and while Francis is sometimes something of a rascal, even he knows better than to make advances to a woman who is not only his Queen, but also, legally, his mother-in-law. No, Louis knows he has nothing to fear from that quarter.  
  
So he lets their obvious enjoyment of each other’s company slide. He says nothing as Mary, Marguerite and Francis begin to take regular hunting and hawking trips, often disappearing, just the three of them, for hours on end. He says nothing, and the months pass.  
  
The months pass, and slowly – oh, so slowly – Mary accustoms herself to her new life as Queen of France. As she does so, she thinks of England less and less. She thinks of _Charles_ less and less. Indeed, at Christmas, when she is caught up in a whirlwind of solemn Masses and the riotous festivities of Twelfth Night, she actually tumbles into bed without having thought of him at all.


	7. VII: January - March 1515

**Greenwich, January 1515**

  
The scroll, when it comes, is sealed with black wax. Henry knows what it is likely to contain before he has even ripped it open. Even the respectful urgings of the Duke of Longueville, who’d done so much to persuade him to wed Mary to his master rather than fight to maintain her Burgundian match, hadn’t been able to hide all of his master’s poor state of health.  
  
“Louis of France is dead,” he says shortly, knowing Katherine is watching him out of the corner of her eye. They’ve been married almost six years. He doesn’t need to look up to know that’s what she’s doing.  
  
At his words, Katherine stops pretending she’s sewing. Her head snaps up from her embroidery hoop, her blue eyes widening and filling with sympathetic tears.  
  
“Poor Mary!” she gasps, “I know she wasn’t excited to do her duty, but to have her wedding bliss cut so short and just when she might have been able to come out of mourning for the young Duchess of Brittany… The Lord’s plan for us all can seem cruel sometimes.”  
  
“I doubt Mary sees this happenstance as cruel,” Henry replies archly, “If I know my sister – and I do – she’ll already be planning to embark on a second bout of nuptial bliss.”  
  
“Before Louis’s body is even cold?” Katherine exclaims, horrified, “Surely not? Mary’s a good girl, she wouldn’t dare breach protocol so brazenly!”  
  
Henry finds this comment so ridiculous, he doesn’t bother to dignify it with a verbal response, only raises an eyebrow as he continues to read.  
  
“They’re taking no chances, I see. Mary has been sent into seclusion for three months. She’s to be watched in case she’s carrying a Dauphin. Pah! As if that old goat would have had any seed left to spare for my sister. He used it all up on Anne of Brittany! Not that it did him any good.”  
  
“Henry!” Katherine sounds truly horrified now. When he glances at her, she frowns at him and then looks pointedly in the direction of her maids-of-honour. The girls are watching him intently, mouths agape at his blunt mockery of the late French King.  
  
Something twists in his stomach. Mother would have scolded him roundly for being so ungentlemanly in the presence of ladies.  
  
But it is beneath a King to apologise, so he says nothing, only chuffs under his breath, his cheeks tinting slightly, and sets the missive aside.  
  
After all, Mary won’t be out of seclusion until April. There’s more than time enough to decide who he’s going to send to collect her.  
  
Though it won’t be Brandon this time. His best friend was honest enough to admit he lost his head in the storm and kissed Mary. Since nothing came of it, and the French didn’t find out, Henry has accepted Charles’s apology and left it at that, but he’s not going to risk the two of them travelling together again, particularly not when Mary thinks herself free to marry. Perhaps Dorset can go. He’s their cousin on their mother’s side, has been married six years and has several young children. He’d make a fine escort for a Dowager Queen.

* * *

  
**Hotel des Tournelles, Paris, March 1515**

„I’m going to marry Mary.”  
  
Francis and Marguerite are playing chess, the flickering flames of the fire they are seated beside throwing odd shadows over the board, when the young King-in-waiting makes his sudden pronouncement. Intent upon taking his bishop with her knight, Marguerite doesn’t think anything of his words at first. When they pierce her concentration, however, she sits up sharply.  
  
“Have you taken leave of your senses! You can’t marry Mary!”  
  
“Why shouldn’t I? She needs to marry again. I need to marry again. France can’t afford to lose her dowry. And it’s not like it hasn’t been done before. Anne of Brittany married two Kings in succession. Why can’t Mary do the same?”  
  
Enthused by his own words, Francis leaps to his feet. The chessboard lies forgotten as he paces, rambling eagerly of what France will look like when he is King and Mary is his wife and Queen.  
  
“Anne of Brittany was not Louis’s mother,” Marguerite says tautly. Her sharp words, so unlike those she usually uses to her little brother, break into Francis’s daydreams and he blinks at her stupidly.  
  
“You became Mary’s son the moment she married Louis. It doesn’t matter that Claude was dead by the time she landed. She’s been Queen since August. You’ve _been her son_ since August. You’ll never get your marriage through the Church.”  
  
“Who says I’ll ask Rome for permission?” Francis scoffs, and Marguerite’s jaw drops. Oh, she has her own doubts about the legitimacy of Rome’s spiritual supremacy, but to challenge the Papacy _quite_ so openly…  
  
“Do you _want_ to be excommunicated?!”  
  
“God forbid!” Francis exclaims, before shrugging with studied carelessness, “But I won’t be. The Holy Father needs our troops against the Turks. I’ll simply marry Mary and then sue for a backdated dispensation afterwards. We might have to build a few chantry chapels in penance, but I’d probably have done that anyway. Forgiveness is always easier to get than permission, particularly where Rome is concerned.”  
  
He comes over to her and attempts to kiss her on the forehead, but, incensed by his reckless confidence, Marguerite twists away. She too springs up, spinning to face him so that they are standing nose-to-nose.  
  
“You seem to have thought of everything,” she bites out, “Except one thing. Consent. No marriage, secret or otherwise, will be legally binding without Mary’s consent. I can’t imagine you’ve asked her, given you haven’t _seen_ her since January.”  
  
“Well, of course not. But you’ve been visiting her every day…and I know you’ll have been singing my praises, _c_ _herie_ ,” Francis smirks at her and Marguerite wants nothing more than to slap the silly expression right off his face.  
  
But she can’t raise her hand to her King. Sister or not, it would be treason, and his being an infuriating little brother would be no excuse.  
  
She contents herself, therefore, with turning away as though their discussion is over, before pausing.  
  
“Mary could still be carrying a Dauphin, you know.” She throws the words over her shoulder. “What will you do if she is?”  
  
“She’s not,” Francis retorts immediately, “She’d be showing by now and either you or _Maman_ would have told me if that was the case.”  
  
Marguerite curses under her breath. She can’t deny the truth of that. Still, she changes tack without missing a beat. She’s debated with her brother often enough to know how to do that.  
  
“How do you know she’ll say yes?” she challenges, eyes sparkling with mischievous daring, “Mary’s never hidden the fact that her brother promised her that she could marry whomsoever she pleased once Louis was dead. What’s to stop her going back to England and holding him to it?”  
  
“Pah, Henry won’t keep his word. No King would, when he has alliances to secure. I wouldn’t, if it were you. No. If Mary wants to choose her own husband, she’s going to have to do it here, in France, before anyone can stop her.”  
  
“And of course, how could she _possibly_ choose anyone but the finest man in France to be her second husband?”  
  
Marguerite’s voice positively drips with sarcasm, but Francis ignores that, simply beaming at her.  
  
“I knew you’d understand. I mean, think about it. Claude dying the very day Mary landed at Boulogne? Louis lingering just long enough that it will no longer incense the Bretons if I remarry? Mary not carrying Louis’s child? It’s Fate, I tell you, Fate. Mary and I will marry at Easter and we’ll have a son in the cradle within the year. You see if we don’t!”  
  
Marguerite opens her mouth to protest – has Francis forgotten that Mary will still be in mourning at Easter? – but he is gone before she can, bounding from her rooms with such virile confidence that she can only shake her head.  
  
“Oh, my little brother,” she murmurs, leaning over to tidy away the abandoned chessboard, “Whatever life will be like with you as France’s King, it will most certainly be interesting."


	8. VIII: April 1515

**Windsor, April 1515**  


_“I know this news will come as a shock to you, but I bid you remember, brother, that you promised me I should be able to choose who I wed after Louis died and why should I **not**_ _choose Francis? We are almost of an age, and he and his sister have been my only true friends since my English ladies were sent home from Abbeville. It is only natural, surely, that we should come to care for one another? I admit I may have sinned by not honouring Louis as I ought, by not waiting for my year of mourning to be over, and that Francis and I have been hasty in marrying in anticipation of a suitable dispensation, but I know you will understand why we have done so, brother. You know what it is like to be in the throes of ungovernable passion. Did you not marry Katherine within a month of our father and grandmothers’ deaths, after all? And besides, Francis and I have made full confession before the Archbishop of Rouen. We repent, honestly we do. **Please,** Henry, send Wolsey to Rome. Have him use his influence on our behalf, so that we might not suffer the ultimate sanction for our folly. So that our children, when they come, might not be tarred with the stain of bastardy.  
  
After all, does England not still need her French alliance just as much as she did three months ago? Am I not doing my duty by being Francis’s Queen, just as much as I was when I was Louis’s blushing bride?”_  
  
Unable to believe what he is reading, Henry throws Mary’s letter to the ground and roars in frustration. How dare Mary wed the French cockerel without so much as asking him?! Has she forgotten that he is her brother, her only living family, and as such, has the final say in whom she weds? God above, he’d been on the point of ordering Dorset to go and collect her! How foolish he would have looked, if his envoy had arrived and tried to compel the Queen of France to return to England! Zounds! Francis would have laughed himself sick!  
  
Henry’s cheeks burn at the mere _thought_ of becoming such a figure of ridicule. He can’t believe his sweet Mary would have opened him up to that, sweeping passion or not.  
  
But then it occurs to him. Ridicule is in fact the least of his worries. It’s nothing compared to the slight Mary has committed against her husband’s memory. Christ, Louis is scarcely cold in his grave. Has Mary _no_ sense of the reverence due to Majesty, of the honour that is due even to dead Kings?  
  
And to come to him, pleading with him to intercede for her with the Holy Father, so that she might avoid her just chastisement, as though she is still the cossetted baby of the nursery? No! It is intolerable!  
  
Henry snarls under his breath and storms from the room, shouting for a horse to be brought round.  
  
Mary’s letter lies forgotten on the ground behind him.

* * *

Several hours later, the woods near Windsor are a dozen rabbits and a brace of hinds lighter.  
  
It is the most successful hunt Henry has had in months, and as such, he is in an excellent mood as he returns to the Castle.  
  
Mary’s letter crunches under his boot as he enters his study and he picks it up.  
  
He re-reads it and this time pity swells in him rather than fury. Francis ought to have known better, but Mary’s only eighteen. And she’s a woman. Women are always emotional. They can’t control themselves the way men can. Of course his little sister will have fallen for Francis’s charm, especially after having been cooped up in those unnatural white rooms for so long. What young woman wouldn’t?  
  
Oh, Mary’s made a mistake, there’s no denying that. But is it a mistake that deserves to imperil her immortal soul? Perhaps not. Besides, as much as Henry hates to admit it, Mary’s right. Relations with Charles of Burgundy and the Emperor are no less frosty than they were three months ago. Henry needs the French – or at the very least, he needs them not to encourage the Scots, who, as ever, are making rumblings about wanting to avenge Flodden and King James. And Mary _is_ his sister. Her being excommunicated would only reflect badly on the House of Tudor.  
  
“William!” Raising his head, Henry shouts to the groom he knows will be standing outside the door.  
  
“Yes, Sire?”  
  
“Find Wolsey and Dorset. Tell them to prepare to go to Rome with all possible speed. I need them to plead my sister’s case with the Holy Father!”

* * *

**Chateau d’Amboise**

  
“Henry’s written,” Mary looks up as Francis enters the room, “He’s sent Wolsey and Dorset to Rome to plead our case.”  
  
“Good,” Francis replies, waving her ladies away and beginning to kiss her fervently, “I’ve sent Their Graces of Laon and Lyon too, but Laon is young and I don’t fully trust Lyon. He’s a Rohan, he’ll have his eyes on Brittany.”  
  
“Why send him then?” Mary asks, somewhat breathlessly, as Francis crosses round behind her and kisses the back of her neck, winding his arms around her from behind as he does so, “Surely we need men we can trust on this?”  
  
“Why do you think?” Francis asks between kisses, “I need him out of the way so that I can establish my hold on Brittany while Renee’s still so young. Then, when our son’s born and we betroth him to Renee, we’ll already have garrisons in place to defend his right to be Duke. Sending Lyon to plead our case in Rome gets the eminent Archbishop out of the way with honour. But Wolsey’s a born statesman. I’m glad Henry’s come around enough to send him. We’ll get our dispensation in no time now.”  
  
Not knowing entirely what to say to that – politics and matters of state have always bored her, unless they come with a masque or a feast attached – Mary falls back on her most powerful weapon, coyness.  
  
“You seem remarkably confident that we shall have a son, My Lord,” she purrs, shifting her head on Francis’s chest so that her loose red curls tickle him mercilessly.  
  
“We try often enough, don’t we?” Francis shrugs.  
  
Before Mary can respond, he sweeps her into his arms and carries her into her bedchamber amidst a peal of giggles.


	9. IX: October 1515

**Paris, October 1515**

  
The French Court is on tenterhooks for the next few months. Everyone who is anyone – and quite a few of those who aren’t anyone at all – has one eye on the road to Rome and the other on Mary’s voluminous skirts.  
  
No one dares to say anything, but they all know they are in a silent race against time. The young King has already proved his virility by fathering the child that cost the Duchess of Brittany her life, and Mary herself is one of seven. Her oldest brother was even an eight-month baby and yet still survived into his teens before a peculiarly English marsh fever claimed his life. If that doesn’t prove the Tudor strength, then what does? And Prince Arthur was born the autumn after Mary’s parents’ marriage. If Mary is anything like her mother, she’ll catch with a healthy child almost indecently quickly, and then where will they be? They cannot risk the Dauphin being seen as a bastard, after all, which he may well be, if the backdated dispensation and an accompanying confirmation of the validity of their union, don’t come in time.  
  
“They will come,” Francis reassures Mary, almost every night, “You’re Wolsey’s Lady Mary, he won’t let you be shamed by failing to procure our dispensation, or the confirmation that our marriage is valid. And if they don’t come in time, why, then, we shall simply behave as if they have. Nobody need know the difference.”  
  
Despite his brave words, however, his voice often rings hollow, and, at the thousandth time of hearing him promise her that all will be well; that no one will ever dare speak against her as long as he is alive, Mary begins to wonder which of them he is really aiming to reassure with his bravado. She’ll never let on, of course, but she has a sneaking suspicion it is himself.  
  
The arrival of a Roman nuncio clad in clerical scarlet that October, therefore, is an occasion of both great relief and great trepidation.  
  
Francis barely waits for the scroll to be placed in his hand before he dismisses his Privy Councillors and rushes to find Mary.  
  
They tear the seal off the letter so brusquely they almost rip the vellum itself.  
  
Mary’s copper curls brush Francis’s dark locks as they peer at the close-packed lines together, scarcely daring to breathe.  
  
A great rush of relief fills them both simultaneously.  
  
The parchment flutters to the ground from Francis’s suddenly nerveless fingers as they look up at each other beaming. He exhales, only then letting on _just_ how worried he’s been, _“Mon Dieu! C’est d’accord!”_  
  
They have got away with it.  
  
Oh, they’re not off scot-free. They will have to pay for their forgiveness, and quite heftily at that – half of Mary’s dowry will have to be sent to Rome, and the other half will have to be used to endow a large nunnery in her name. Francis himself will have to find the money to endow a monastery that can be paired with her nunnery. But none of that matters. Not compared to what could have happened. Oh, it was only a slight chance, but given the precedent of what happened to a French King who refused to reunite with a wife, despite Papal orders, the spectre had loomed in the backs of their minds.  
  
But it hasn’t happened. They haven’t been excommunicated. France hasn’t been laid under Interdict, as it was in the reign of Philippe II.  
  
“Our son can be christened. Thank the Lord, he can be christened. He can be received into the blessings of Christendom.”  
  
Mary doesn’t realise she’s spoken aloud until Francis’s jaw drops open.  
  
“A son!” he breathes, before catching himself and repeating the phrase questioningly, searching her face for confirmation.  
  
“A son? Truly? You are…?”  
  
She laughs. This wasn’t quite the way she’d envisaged telling him, but why shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t this be a double celebration?  
  
Slipping her hand into Francis’s, she lifts their joined hands to her lips so that she can kiss his palm, before guiding their joined hands down so that their interlaced fingers can brush against her still flat stomach.  
  
“The physicians confirmed it last week, _mon Coeur._ God Willing, we shall have a son by Lady Day.”  
  
Francis’s whoop of joy is loud enough to be heard at the other end of the palace.


	10. X: February 1516

**Chateau d’Amboise, February 1516**

  
“My brother has a daughter,” Mary looks up from Henry’s letter to glance across at Marguerite. Her older sister raises her head from the tiny shirt she is sewing and raises an eyebrow.

“Well. It took long enough for his Spanish pomegranate to start bearing fruit. Is the child healthy?”

Part of Mary wants to spring to Katherine’s defence. In many ways, the Spanish infanta is the only maternal figure she can remember, at least apart from Mother Guildford. It is over a decade since her birth mother died, after all, and by now, Elizabeth of York has been reduced to a cloud of golden hair, a soft voice and the scent of rosewater in Mary’s memories.

But, at the same time, there is no denying that her brother and his wife have been remarkably unlucky when it comes to starting a family.

In the end, she voices none of her turmoil, merely shrugs, “Seems to be. Henry’s named her Mary and asked if I’ll stand as her sponsor at her Confirmation.”

“You’ll have said yes, of course?” Marguerite’s voice is light and teasing. She knows Mary well enough by now that she doesn’t really have to ask.

Mary laughs, “How could I not? Henry also asks that, since he has paid me the signal honour of naming England’s newest Princess for me, I return the favour and name my coming child for him, should it be a boy.”

“He would have you name my brother’s first son anything other than Francois?” Marguerite arches an eyebrow, “My brother would never allow it and I think you know that. Charles for our father, perhaps, if he’s in a particularly sentimental mood, but even that…”

She trails off, though the words she doesn’t say hang pregnant in the air between them. No Dauphin will be named Henri, not as long as Francis is alive.

“It would be nice to name a son for my brother, though,” Mary murmurs. Her tone is wistful, but not truly protesting. She is happy enough to change the subject as Marguerite suddenly clicks her fingers and leans forward in her seat, as though she has suddenly remembered something.

“While we’re on the subject of children, let me take little Anne into my household while you’re in confinement, would you?”

“Annie?” Mary echoes, glancing across to where the raven-haired little girl sits among her ladies, folding cloths that will be used as napkins for Mary’s coming child. Anne’s tongue is poking out from between her lips in concentration, “Why do you want her? She’s just a child. A clever child, I grant you, but she’s not even nine yet.”

“Exactly. She’s eight years old and within the last year, she has, in different ways, lost both her mother and her sister. I don’t think it will do her any good to be cooped up in your lying-in chambers with the rest of your ladies. You know how women like to talk of the horrors they’ve seen at other labours.”

“Yes. I’ve never understood why. Are they not afraid of cursing the mother to bear the monster if they scare her too much?”

Mary raises her eyebrows, but even as she speaks, her mind is whirring. She’d heard that Anne's mother Lady Elizabeth had died of childbed fever, of course she had. Sir Thomas had summoned fifteen-year-old Mary home last July to care for her new-born sibling – a girl Lady Elizabeth had apparently named Eleanor the one and only time she’d been well enough to hold her. Mary had had to ask permission to leave France, of course, and had told Mary why. Nevertheless, until Marguerite had mentioned it, Mary hadn’t stopped to consider what effect no longer having her older sister around might have on little Anne.

In truth, it’s hard to imagine anything having much of an effect on the child. She’s so bright, curious and eager to please.

But Mary lost her own mother to childbed fever when she was seven. She might not be able to remember Elizabeth of York, but she does remember how devastating that loss felt, and how it was only compounded when Meg was sent to Scotland only a few months later. Moreover, she knows it is only her royal training that is letting her hide the terror that grips her like a vice every time one of her ladies so much as mentions her lying-in. Marguerite is right. Her chambers will be no place for little Annie, no matter how much she might appreciate having someone to chatter in English with.

“Sister? Is everything all right? Should I fetch the midwife?”

Marguerite’s soft question breaks into her reverie, bringing her back to herself.

Mary shakes her shoulders slightly and nods to her sister.

“No need, Marguerite. I’m fine. But you’re right. My lying-in chambers will be no place for little Annie. Take her. Let her share lessons with little Renee, and serve you when she’s not in the schoolroom. I hope she serves you as well as she’s served me. And let’s hope your nephew arrives without too much fuss.”

“Indeed.” Marguerite rises and kisses Mary’s cheek, before signing to her maid to pack away her embroidery hoop and curtsying her farewells. Mary waves her away and watches as Marguerite crosses the room, crouching down in front of little Annie.

They exchange a few soft words, and then Annie looks across to Mary, a question in her big brown eyes.

Mary nods encouragingly, and Annie doesn’t need telling twice. She jumps up and follows Marguerite and her handmaiden out of the room, pile of linens forgotten. Mary lets them get out of earshot and then calls for a footman to move Annie’s things from the room housing her maids to the room housing Marguerite’s. She’s going into confinement next week anyway, so if Annie is happy to go into Marguerite’s household, then there’s no use prolonging things.


	11. XI: March 1516

**St Germain-en-Laye, March 1516**

  
“Her Majesty has given birth to a healthy daughter.” Thomas de Foix bows slightly as he pronounces the happy news to the new father.  
  
Francis is praying by the altar rail, but even from the door of the chapel, Thomas can see his face light up as he hastily crosses himself and jumps to his feet.  
  
“Mary? The child? They are well, you are sure?”  
  
“So the midwives and Madame de Alencon tell me, Sire,” Thomas assures his King, careful to keep a smile on his face as he speaks. Everyone has been hoping for a boy. A boy to keep France safe; a boy to marry his aunt-cousin, Renee and secure Brittany for the Valois Crown. Encouraging though the birth of a healthy _fille de France_ is, especially given the tragic record staining the French royal nursery in recent decades, the new-born Princess is not the child everyone has been praying for. Nor is she the one the young King has been constantly assured is bound to arrive, the one he has been boasting about every time the Queen has been taken ill and had to retire early from one festivity or another.  
  
And Francis is mercurial, his temperament a legacy of a childhood of overindulgence. He has never been denied anything he’s truly wanted before. It’s hard to know how he will react to not having a Dauphin at the first time of trying, especially after everyone has spent the past six months assuring him that he will.  
  
All of this flashes through Thomas’s head as he watches his monarch bound towards him, before he catches up with what Francis is saying.  
  
“Sound the bells! Sound the bells and have Te Deums sung throughout the land. I want every man, woman and child in France to know that my English Rose has broken the curse on the nursery before the week is out!”  
  
So saying, Francis is gone before Thomas has even nodded agreement, leaping towards Mary’s rooms with the energy only a new father can muster.

* * *

  
The baby is clean and swaddled by the time he arrives, snuffling contentedly in Mary’s arms as she looks towards the door, beaming at him tiredly.  
  
Marguerite stands at the head of the bed, looking down at the child in Mary’s arms, adoring pride clear as day on her face. At the sound of Francis’s tread, she raises her head, catching his gaze with a brilliant smile.  
  
“Congratulations, brother. She’s beautiful. Your colouring, but Mary’s eyes and nose, you’ll be pleased to know.”  
  
Francis chuckles, as he knows he is supposed to, though frustration wells in him for a moment. How dare Marguerite steal Mary’s thunder? Oh, he has no doubt that his sister will be a devoted and doting aunt, and Mary does consider her a sister, but all the same. Mary is his wife. It should have been for her to tell him of their daughter’s beauty, of her looks.  
  
But then Mary reaches up to cover Marguerite’s hand with her own where the older woman has hold of her shoulder, soft gratitude in her gaze, and the moment passes. Francis seats himself on the edge of the bed and holds out his arms so that Mary can place their daughter – their daughter! – in his hold.  
  
“What shall we call her?” he breathes, scarcely daring to raise his voice above a whisper. In some strange way, this moment feels sacred. He is loath to profane it by speaking too loudly.  
  
“I thought Marguerite.” This time, it is Mary who speaks, and when he looks up at her, tearing his gaze from the baby’s downy head, she raises one shoulder slightly, though she winces as she does it.  
  
“I’d prefer Elisabeth for my mother. You doubtless thought she’d be Louise for yours. But we both have a sister named Margaret. What could be fairer, then, than to name our eldest daughter for both our sisters?”  
  
Francis laughs and nods wonderingly.  
  
“Even fresh from the throes of childbirth, you know how to wheedle me, Mary,” he teases, leaning over to kiss her on the brow, “Marguerite of France she shall be.”  
  
“Marie,” his wife murmurs. Francis blinks in confusion. Haven’t they just agreed that their daughter shall be Marguerite?  
  
Sensing his bewilderment, Mary drags herself back from the brink of exhaustion and reaches out to put a hand on his arm where it is curved around little Marguerite.  
  
“I was talking it over with Marguerite while I was in confinement. Our little girl seals my place as a French Queen rather than an English Princess. I should probably start using the French form of my name.”  
  
“Marie, not Mary? Are you sure?”  
  
Francis can’t help but ask. Despite how happy they are together, Mary has always been adamant that she won’t give up the use of her English name, at least not in informal situations. This is such a sea-change in her thinking that he can’t help but wonder whether it’s not just the motherly emotions speaking, whether she’s going to go back on her word as soon as she’s slept and eaten.  
  
But when Mary meets his gaze, there is no guile in her eyes at all.  
  
“Marie, not Mary,” she confirms softly, and tilts her chin so that he only has to lean forward the tiniest bit to kiss her. Silence stretches between them for several long moments. Their hearts are so full that they cannot find the words.  
  
“Weh…weh…”  
  
With a baby’s unerring instinct to know when they are no longer the centre of attention, little Marguerite breaks the moment. She squirms and fusses, but before Francis can do more than register her cries, the wet nurse is already there, swooping the little Princess into her arms and bearing her off to feed. At the same time, the midwife descends on Mary, plumping her pillows and clucking her tongue about too much excitement all at once.  
  
A little startled at the sudden peremptory movements all around him, Francis knows when he is not wanted.  
  
Rising, he kisses Mary – Marie! – one last time and disappears to tell his mother the good news.


	12. XII: April 1516

**Greenwich, April 1516**

  
Margaret Bryan is a loyal servant of King Henry. No one can dispute that. And no one could have been prouder to have been named Princess Mary’s governess when the infant was given a household of her own following Queen Katherine’s churching. Truly.  
  
But even Margaret’s fierce loyalty to her sovereign lord doesn’t mean she’s not sometimes infuriated by His Majesty’s utter ignorance in all matters of childrearing.  
  
The young Princess’s household is settled at Greenwich, while her parents move to Richmond, an easy boat ride away. No sooner are the rooms in order than the news comes that the King, overriding Queen Katherine’s protests that the children are too young to share a household, has agreed to let his baby niece, Lady Margaret Douglas, be raised with her royal cousin.  
  
A day later comes the news that the royal cousins will also be joined by eight-month-old Eleanor Boleyn, youngest daughter to King Henry’s trusted courtier, Sir Thomas Boleyn. Orphaned within a week of her birth, Mistress Eleanor has so far been raised by her eldest sister, Mistress Mary, with the help of an elderly nurse, Simonette.  
  
But Mary Boleyn is sixteen now, and her father has arranged for her to marry Sir William Carey of Aldenham, one of the King’s Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, at Easter. Mary can hardly be expected to take her baby sister with her when she marries, and besides, Sir Thomas is ambitious and high-reaching. He longs for the prestige that having a daughter raised in the royal nursery will bring him. As such, he has begged for the boon off the King, and the King, generous as ever, has signed it off, reasoning that babies are babies and Lady Bryan and her maids will of course be capable of caring for all three infants. As if there are no differences between the needs of a six-week-old, the needs of a six-month-old and those of an eight-month-old.  
  
Margaret would never dare speak against her King, of course, but sometimes, just sometimes, on a particularly bad day, she does just wish His Majesty had at least asked her first.  
  
Oh, Princess Mary is no trouble, not really, but she does have a voracious appetite, meaning she is wailing for her wet nurse more often than not. Isabel is happy to do her bit to safeguard England’s future, of course, but she does so often look waxen, as though Her Highness has drained her dry.  
  
Lady Margaret, meanwhile, is teething. This in itself wouldn’t be too bad, as the teeth aren’t causing her much pain, but unfortunately, they are making her bowels run. Often, it feels as though Margaret has no sooner directed one of the maids to change Lady Margaret’s smallclothes than she has dirtied them again. The poor lass is hardly ever off someone’s knee, being sponged down – and shouting her displeasure at the cold.  
  
Mistress Eleanor is never out of someone’s arms either, but again, it is hard to blame the child. At eight months old, she is precisely the wrong age to have changed homes. She is old enough, alert enough, to be scared by her new surroundings and caretakers. However, she isn’t old enough to have the reasons behind her sudden displacement explained to her, or to express her fears properly. Therefore, all she can do to show her unhappiness at all the changes is cry, and this she does, almost constantly. The only thing that soothes her is being rocked in the arms of someone with blonde hair and wearing the scent of lavender. From the way Mistress Eleanor reacts so favourably to the scent of lavender, the soon-to-be Lady Carey must wear it. And of course, both Mary Boleyn and baby Eleanor have the blonde curls of their late mother, Lady Elizabeth Howard.  
  
All these various challenges together, then, means that the nursery wing at Greenwich is hardly a haven of serenity, except for a few hours each evening when all three girls have been coaxed into their cradles and, with luck, won’t need anything else until Princess Mary wakes just as the household is retiring for one of her countless feedings.  
  
But of course, the King never visits. Proud though he is of his only living daughter, he’s far too busy to pay much attention to her, at least until she can walk and talk.  
  
Thus, although he is a doting father on the few fleeting visits he does pay to the nursery, King Henry never guesses what turmoil his careless generosity to the Queen of Scots and Sir Thomas Boleyn has caused Lady Bryan and the rest of the nursery staff. And Margaret will never tell him. She’s too proud for that. She’s been shouldered with a duty to England and she’ll fulfil it without a murmur, even if she drops with exhaustion in the process.

* * *

  
Across the Channel, however, things are running far more smoothly. To everyone’s surprise, little Marguerite, or Margot, as she quickly becomes known so as to distinguish her from her namesake aunt, is a remarkably placid baby. The tiny girl is content to lie in her cradle, or in the arms of her governess, Francoise de Foix, for hours on end and scarcely makes a peep.  
  
She is so calm, in fact, that Marguerite often jokes that if it weren’t for Margot’s dark hair and cerulean eyes, she’d wonder whether the child was Francis and Marie’s daughter at all.  
  
“This girl never cries!” Francis boasts to the Spanish Ambassadors, as he shows six-week-old Margot off at the lavish banquet following Marie’s churching.  
  
He strips Margot bare as he speaks, declaring her as faultless and beautiful as her mother, the fairest rose in all of Christendom.  
  
The Ambassadors, as is their wont, fall over themselves to agree with him, and Francis smirks at Marie over their bowing heads.  
  
Even from several feet away, she can _feel_ the lust in his gaze.  
  
A shiver runs down her spine. It is a full three months, if not longer, since she and Francis even so much as slept in the same room. At moments like these, it feels like an eternity.  
  
She returns his look boldly and tilts her head, her lips curving into a pout as sultry as any courtesan’s.  
  
 _“Later_ ,” she promises him silently, “ _You can seek to seed my womb with a Dauphin later.”_


	13. XIII: August 1516

**Rambouillet, August 1516**

  
Little Margot is scarcely five months old when Marie’s breasts swell and grow tender again. When she can barely sit up in the morning without first nibbling on costly ginger and arrowroot.  
  
Unlike the last time this happened to her, she doesn’t panic. Having been through it once before, she has a strong suspicion as to the cause of her sudden malaise.  
  
As it sinks in, she groans. Her ladies will turn into a flock of twittering starlings, fussing over her slightest wince or shift in discomfort as soon as they garner even a whisper of her suspicions. They have a tendency to treat her like a petted child anyway, and that indulgence is only heightened tenfold whenever they think she might have missed her courses.  
  
Oh, part of her loves the attention. She can’t help it. It reminds her of her heady days as the baby of the Tudor nursery, when her delicate health and charming smile made her lightest word almost law among her doting attendants. But even for her, their constant attentions can be stifling. And it will only be ten times worse should her suspicions prove true and she is forbidden from riding, hunting and dancing for the sake of the child.  
  
“Honestly, you’d think I was made of glass, the way these ninnies fret over me so,” she complains to Marguerite, as the two of them stroll through the parkland surrounding Rambouillet, their hawks on their wrists, “Have they forgotten that the mettle of the Tudors flows in my veins? I’m not going to collapse if they take their eyes off me for a few seconds.”  
  
“Can you blame them?” Marguerite raises an eyebrow as she tosses her merlin into the air. “Speaking frankly, it’s not as if you and my brother are models of decorum. You can’t be in the same room for more than five minutes before you’re kissing and fondling each other. You’re going to conceive again sooner rather than later, and given how hard the early months were for you when it came to carrying Margot, it’s no wonder they’re watching you like a boil of hawks for any sign that her brother might be on his way.”  
  
“Well, I wish they wouldn’t,” Marie pouts, “It’s not like they can help me with the sickness anyway. All they ever do is make moues of sympathy and tell me it will pass, which is no good at all.”  
  
Marguerite sees the petulant set of Marie’s jaw and bites her tongue on a retort. Her brother and his wife are well-suited to one another, she finds. They are both utterly gay and charming when they are happy, and both equally impossible to reason with when they have their minds set against something.  
  
“ _Honestly,”_ Marguerite tells herself, not for the first time, _“Madame de Foix ought to count herself lucky. Given her parentage, I don’t know how Margot ended up such a placid little darling.”_

* * *

  
Mademoiselle Margot might be a charmer, but she’s clearly not the only charmer in the royal nursery. As the weeks pass and Marie’s suspicion turns to certainty, the young King develops a surprising fondness for spending long afternoons in the nursery wing.  
  
It doesn’t take long for anyone with eyes to figure out what – or rather who – his true reason for doing so is. After all, while Mademoiselle Margot is His Grace’s firstborn child, all she does is eat, soil herself and sleep, none of which are activities likely to capture the imagination of a boisterous, virile young King, at least not for long.  
  
Madame de Foix, however, is a pretty blonde with piercing blue eyes and curls that cascade to her waist when she releases them from the confines of her hood. Sister to the King’s good friend, Thomas, Lord of Lescun, she generally holds herself aloof from Court machinations, or so she likes people to think.  
  
However, she is seen laughing and ducking under the royal arm one evening after Vespers, as King Francis playfully tries to stop her returning to put her little charge to bed.  
  
The King catches her hand and kisses it before he will let her pass. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with the gesture in itself, but the tender informality with which it is delivered speak volumes. As do the sapphires that glisten in Francoise’s fair hair, revealed for a brief moment as the tussle knocks her hood askew. Those could not have been bought on a governess’s salary alone.


	14. XIV: September 1516

**Langeais, September 1516**

  
“Lisette, bring me my rose of sapphires. I want to wear it for our dinner with the Burgundian Ambassadors tonight.”  
  
Marie stretches languidly as she speaks, relieved beyond measure that, late in the third month of her pregnancy, the constant nausea has faded, leaving her full of vigour and able to withstand the rigours of a full state dinner. Francis is signing Margot’s betrothal to Marie’s former fiancé, the young Duke of Burgundy, this evening. Marie doesn’t want rumour to fly that she doesn’t approve, as they doubtless would if she didn’t put in an appearance at the banquet.  
  
Besides, part of her wants to show Charles – even if only by proxy – how beautiful and gracious she’s become. How much he’s missed out on by jilting her. Wearing her rose of sapphires is part of that. Blue becomes her copper colouring like nothing else does. Moreover, the rose of sapphires is one of the few overtly English pieces she still owns. Quite apart from its shape, it is something she inherited from her mother, Elizabeth of York. It will do no harm, she thinks, to remind Charles of Burgundy that her daughter has Tudor and Plantagenet heritage as well as Valois.  
  
She is not expecting Lisette to flush and shuffle her feet awkwardly.  
  
“Madame…the piece you want…It isn’t in your jewel casket. It was sent to the jewellers a week ago for mending because the centre stone was loose. No one has seen it since.”  
  
Marie’s heart misses a beat. The royal jewellers have never kept a piece so long before. A day is usually all they need to work their craft. Two at the most.  
  
Dread pools in her stomach, but she pushes it aside in favour of biting, cold, fury.  
  
“That was my mother’s,” she grits out. “Find it! Find it, or I swear to God I’ll send you all packing!”  
  
“Madame!” Lisette squeaks, bobbing a frightened curtsy. She scuttles off, calling to the other maids-of-honour in French so fast that even Marie, who considers herself more than fluent by now, can’t keep up.  
  
Marie’s rooms are turned upside-down within minutes, but even an hour of frantic searching fails to unearth the precious brooch. In the end, Marie has to descend for supper wearing her red and silver gown, paired with rubies, instead of her sapphires. She can’t help fighting back tears as she does so.  
  
Oh, she knows it is only a brooch, that she has dozens more, but the sapphire rose has always been special. It has always meant more to her than any other jewel.  
  
Her father had gifted it to her on her seventh birthday, scarcely a month after the death of her mother. He’d made her promise to take care of it, saying her mother had willed it to her especially, so that her youngest daughter might have something to remember her by.  
  
And Marie had. She might have had a careless attitude towards the rest of her fine pieces – much to the horror of her poor governess, who was often driven to distraction by the number of necklaces, rings and hair ornaments Marie lost or damaged over the course of her childhood and adolescence – but the sapphire rose had always been different. She had shut it in its own little casket, peeping at it most nights before bed, but only daring to wear it on particularly special occasions. To lose it now, after all these years…she can’t bear the thought.  
  
_“St Anthony, help me find it. Help me find the last memory I have of my mother,”_ is the last prayer that leaves her lips that night.  
  


* * *

  
Francoise de Foix is late returning to her small chamber that night. Mademoiselle Marguerite has a slight ear infection, poor darling, and as such, was unusually fractious about being laid to sleep. She kicked and wailed long past her normal bedtime, only settling against Francoise’s shoulder.  
  
But Mabel, the wet nurse, has Her Highness now, and the rhythmic sucking and swallowing of a feed seems to have eased the pressure in her ears somewhat, allowing the child to drift off at last, thus allowing Francoise to slip away to her room for a few hours’ sleep.  
  
She is just opening her door when there is a cough from behind her.  
  
“Madame de Foix?”  
  
Starting, she whips round, fixing the errant page with a steely glare.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“His Majesty asked the jewellers to send you this. He wants you to – nay, he begs you to wear it for the farewell masque for the Burgundian Ambassadors at the weekend.”  
  
The page holds out a little padded casket, at least having the grace to look ashamed at having scared the King’s sweetheart.  
  
Francoise can’t help the way her heart misses a beat. Francis is always so generous with the jewels he gifts or loans her. And these are for her to wear at the farewell masque for the Burgundian Ambassadors, where she will be representing her young charge, the newly-betrothed Duchess of Burgundy. Excitement wells in her at the thought of how lavish the corresponding ornaments will necessarily be.  
  
She is careful to show none of this on her face, however, schooling herself to be impassive until she is in the privacy of her bedchamber.  
  
Only then does she dare open the casket and peep at what’s inside.  
  
A gasp escapes her.  
  
Nestled against a swathe of black velvet is a glittering rose made of sapphires.


	15. XV: September 1516

**Langeais, September 1516**  


The first hint anyone gets that anything is wrong is when Marie, hand in hand with the Duc de Alencon, comes face-to-face with Francoise de Foix.  
  
Madame de Foix is still in the royal blue gown she wore for the masque and Marie stops dead at the sight of her.  
  
She brings the dancers to a crashing halt around them, but she can’t bring herself to care about that. All her focus is on the rose of sapphires with a pearl at its centre that is gleaming on Madame de Foix’s breast.  
  
“That’s my mother’s.”  
  
Her voice is icy with rage. Her every word cuts through the sudden silence, freezing all those within earshot. One observer, standing close by, later says that the young Queen puts him in mind of a snake preparing to strike as she draws herself up to her not-inconsiderable full height, lips white with fury.  
  
And then strike she does. Her hand shoots out and she wrenches at the brooch so hard that it comes away in her hand with a great tearing of fabric.  
  
Madame de Foix gasps and drops to the floor in a curtsy, hand flying to her chest in a futile effort to protect her modesty. Marie stands over her, fairly crackling with fury, like some great avenging angel.  
  
“This is my mother’s brooch,” she repeats, “My mother’s.”  
  
Her hand flies out again and there is the unmistakeable ‘crack’ of flesh hitting flesh, before Madame de Foix’s head rocks back, cheek already purpling and bleeding where Marie’s rings have bitten into her flesh.  
  
“Was raising my daughter not enough for you, you harlot? Was stealing my husband’s heart not enough? You had to spoil my only memory of _my mother_ into the bargain? My mother, who was ten times the woman you’ll ever be?”  
  
Marie’s voice has risen to a shriek and Francis, who, up to this point, has been as frozen by the spectacle as anyone else at Court, shakes himself.  
  
“Enough!” he snarls, striding down from the dais to interpose himself between Marie and their daughter’s governess, “Marie, enough!”  
  
Before he can say any more, however, Marie whirls to face him.  
  
“Don’t you _dare_ protect her! Don’t you _dare!_ You’re just as guilty as she is. None of the jewellers would have sent one of _my_ brooches to _Maîtresse_ de Foix without _your_ say-so! Don’t think I don’t know that. You’re just as guilty! Just as guilty!”  
  
Francis’s mouth falls open. No one has ever spoken to him like that before. Startled, he hesitates. Only for a moment, but it is enough.  
  
Tears burning in her eyes, Marie flees the hall before anyone can stop her.  
  
Her husband is left standing alone in the midst of the crowd, his heart sinking as he realises that the Burgundian Ambassadors, whose farewell entertainment this was supposed to be, have heard every word.


	16. XVI: September 1516

**Langeais, September 1516**

  
“What am I to do? I only asked the jewellers to pick out some sapphires that Marie didn’t wear very often for Francoise to borrow for the masque. How was I to know that they’d choose Marie’s mother’s brooch?”  
  
Francis stalks around his sister’s chambers, growling under his breath. As the last word leaves his mouth, he turns to Marguerite, appealing to her for sympathy; to tell him that this fiasco can’t be laid at his door.  
  
Unusually, given how his older sister dotes on him, he finds none. Marguerite simply stares back at him until he sighs and slumps in defeated silence.  
  
Only then does she exhale, lay down her embroidery hoop and lean forward to look him in the eye.  
  
“Francis, I love you, _mon cher,_ but even I have to admit you handled that remarkably badly.”  
  
Francis splutters in his own defence, but Marguerite holds up a quelling hand, “Oh, bed the little minx, by all means. That’s your right as a King and as a man. But to flaunt her at your daughter’s betrothal, when Marie can’t dance in the entertainments herself? And to let her wear your wife’s own jewellery, particularly when you _know_ how precious that piece is to Marie? That really was beyond the pale. I’m not surprised Marie tore a strip off you. I’d be spitting feathers if Alençon treated me in such a careless fashion.”  
  
“He wouldn’t dare,” Francis flashes back, “You’re my sister, a Princess of the Blood, or as near to it as makes no difference. He wouldn’t dare!”  
  
“And Marie is your Queen. She’s carrying your Dauphin,” Marguerite returns, “Frankly, brother, given how enraged she was, I think you’re lucky she didn’t start miscarrying there and then. You must remember that she’s young, and far more isolated than most foreign Queens are, thanks to Louis dismissing her English ladies so soon after their marriage. You need to be gentle with her, brother, not treat her as callously as you would have done Claude. At least until she gives you a son.”  
  
“I wouldn’t have…” Francis starts, but he falls silent at the withering glance Marguerite subjects him to.  
  
“What would you have me do?” he asks instead.  
  
“Remove Madame de Foix from Margot’s household and replace her with an Englishwoman.”  
  
“Remove – But Francoise has done nothing wrong!” Francis splutters again. Marguerite arches an eyebrow.  
  
“ _Madame de Foix_ has dallied with a married man. She can hardly be held up as a paragon of virtue, fit to instil decorum into the Princess and Ladies of France. She must go. Surely even you can see that.”  
  
“Well, maybe. But to replace her with an Englishwoman? The Court won’t like it.”  
  
“Pah! Are you a mouse, to be led by what others think of you? Giving Marie another ally at the heart of the Court would be no bad thing. A strong Queen is a strong mother and a sign of a strong France. The English lady need not raise the Dauphin, if that’s what you’re worried about. Give him to a Breton to be raised as the future Duke. The Bretons would probably even thank you for it. And the young Dukes can be given to St Pol or Montmorency if you wish. But, if you want a harmonious marriage, let Marie have an Englishwoman at her side to raise her daughters. As for Madame de Foix, why, keep your sweetheart by all means. Heavens, set her up as your _maitresse-en-titre_ if she means that much to you. But don’t forget to humour your pregnant wife too, lest you risk the child she carries.”  
  
Francis hesitates, abashed by his sister’s forceful words and Marguerite excuses herself with a graceful curtsy. She knows her brother well enough to know that, beloved sister or not, she can’t push him any further. His mind will already be whirring at a horse’s gallop.


	17. XVII: September 1516

**Beaulieu, September 1516**

  
“I have just had the most peculiar letter from Francis,” Henry announces, as he strides into Katherine’s rooms to dine with her.  
  
“Oh?” she prods gently, when he says nothing more, her Spanish lilt caressing the word in a way that still makes his heart jump when it catches him unawares, even after seven years of marriage.  
  
“He wants us to send an Englishwoman to Amboise to act as his daughter’s nursery governess. Apparently Mary, or Marie, as she’s calling herself now, has taken against Madame de Foix and is insisting on an Englishwoman.”  
  
Henry rolls his eyes as he speaks, but there is a fond note in his voice. Even with the Channel between them, he can’t quite resist his baby sister’s charms.  
  
Katherine blinks, “And Francis is going along with this? When every noblewoman in France would kill for the honour of raising little Margot? Jesu, he truly must be besotted with Mary.”  
  
Henry shrugs, “Apparently there was some sort of unpleasantness in front of the Burgundian Ambassadors. Francis was worried Mary might lose her new babe, so he’s humouring her, at least for now. Expectant mothers must be humoured after all.”  
  
He raises an eyebrow back at Katherine with these last words, and despite herself, she flushes, remembering more than one occasion when the discomforts of pregnancy had made her less gracious than truly befitted a Queen, were she to be honest with herself.  
  
Before Henry can pounce on her embarrassment, however, she turns the subject neatly back to the letter from Paris.  
  
“Mary’s with child again? So soon? Francis didn’t waste any time after her churching, did he? And more importantly, will you do as he asks?”  
  
“Of course!” Henry exclaims, “Louis treated Mary shamefully, sending her English ladies away before the ink had even dried on her marriage register. When he had sworn before God that they could stay, to boot! And besides, to have an English influence in the nursery of the future King of France? That’s a golden chance, one far too good to pass up. Of course I’ll send someone. My only question to you is who I should send.”  
  
“Margaret would be happy to go, you know that.”  
  
Henry shakes his head before the words are even fully out of Katherine’s mouth.  
  
“Send a Plantagenet out of England, to France, where I can’t watch her and where Francis could use her against me if the fancy took him? I don’t think so!”  
  
“Henry,” Katherine sighs, “Margaret’s been at my side since I first stepped foot in this country. She was my chief lady when I was married to Arthur. She’s never once protested, even though her brother’s death was the price my parents demanded for my arrival in this country. If that didn’t cause resentment, then she’s not going to stop being loyal to you just because she crosses the Channel. And besides, she’s a widow with five children yet to reach majority. She could more than do with the extra income. Just send her.”  
  
“No,” Henry sets his jaw mulishly, “Blandish me all you like, but I won’t risk it. If you want to boost Cousin Margaret’s income that badly, then make her Mary’s governess in a year or two, once she and Meg have outgrown Lady Bryan’s care. But Margaret is not stepping foot out of England. I forbid it.”  
  
Katherine resists the urge to scream at her husband’s obstinacy by virtue of a supreme effort of will. She takes a bite of her trout to buy herself time before she speaks again.  
  
“As you wish, husband. Then, might I suggest Lady Parr? She’s worked wonders with the Royal Court school, her French is faultless and she has two young daughters who are of an age to act as companions to little Margot. Moreover, she too could do with the extra income, now that Sir Thomas has died in that border skirmish.”  
  
“God rest his soul,” Henry interjects hastily. He crosses himself and Katherine follows suit.  
  
“Her son wouldn’t be able to go with her, of course. He’d have to stay here and be raised as an English gentleman. But it’s a thought, Cata. It’s a thought.”  
  
Henry loses himself in thought for a few moments, then shakes his head.  
  
“Send Maud to me after Mass tomorrow. I’ll put the idea to her and let her know it would please me mightily if she would go to France to bolster my sister in the French bedlam. See what she says.”  
  
Katherine nods, “Of course. I’m sure she’ll be honoured,” and then the two of them lapse into silence for the remainder of their meal.


	18. XVIII: November 1516

**St-Germain-en-Laye, November 1516**

  
“Marie, _ma cherie,_ ” Francis kisses her hand as he dips his head in a half-bow.  
  
“My lord husband,” Marie returns, just a breath of coolness in her tone.  
  
Neither of them have raised the matter of Madame de Foix, not since she was stripped of her post as Margot’s governess and bundled off to Blois at the head of her own household. Despite their mutual silence on the matter, however, Marie knows that Madame de Foix is queening it at the head of a pseudo-court and that Francis visits his darling frequently. She has no doubt that he is simply waiting for her to go into confinement with their son so that he can bring Francoise back to Court and install her as his _maitresse-en-titre,_ something he would doubtless love to do with minimum fuss.  
  
Marie knows all this, and it stings like a nettle against her heart. Oh, she has decided not to make a fuss, not unless Francis or Francoise breach protocol too brazenly, like they did at the masque for the Spanish Ambassadors. It galls her to keep quiet, but she knows that temper won’t help anything, not when it comes to this. She was fourteen when Henry took his first mistress. She saw how Katherine railed at him, and how that only widened the rift between the royal couple still further. She’s always sworn to herself that she would never act like that.  
  
But she can’t hide her pain at having to share her husband, not completely. No woman could. As such, while she doesn’t shun Francis, she doesn’t meet him more than halfway either. If he truly wants her forgiveness, wants things to go back to the way they were in the early days of their marriage, then he’s going to have to earn it.  
  
For once, Francis doesn’t seem to notice her coolness towards him. He is visibly excited, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a little boy.  
  
“I have a surprise for you, my love!”  
  
“You do?” Marie asks, raising her eyes to meet his. Despite herself, she can’t help the frisson that goes down her spine at his words. She doesn’t like to think of herself as a woman whose affections can be bought, but Francis can be overwhelmingly generous when he chooses to be…  
  
Francis nods eagerly before she can let that train of thought go any further, “ _Oui._ Louis treated you abominably when he refused to let you keep your English ladies. Every foreign Queen deserves at least one or two confidantes from her native land. And our darling Margot needs a new governess now that Madame de Foix has been sent to pastures new. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone. May I present…”  
  
Breaking off, Francis waves behind himself triumphantly, beckoning forward a fair-haired woman in her mid-twenties and two little girls who toddle along behind her hand in hand.  
  
The woman sinks into a silent curtsy and Francis finishes with a flourish, “Lady Parr and her daughters, Mistress Katheryn and Mistress Anne!”  
  
Marie stares down at the woman, taking in her fair hair, and then, as she rises, her round face and clear gaze. She’s seen this woman many times before, in close conference with Katherine over the education of the children who were on the fringes of the English Court.  
  
“It’s Maud, isn’t it? Maud Parr?”  
  
“Yes, My Lady. And these are my daughters, Katheryn and Anne. They’re eager to do their duty by Your Grace. You’ll take good care of Mademoiselle Marguerite, won’t you, girls?”  
  
“Yes, Mama,” Katheryn answers at once, bobbing a wobbly curtsy, but Marie hardly hears her. Charming though the four-year-old is, she is far more focused on her husband.  
  
He is standing a few paces away, watching her intently for her reaction.  
  
“Do you mean it?” she mouths at him.  
  
“She’ll not have charge of our son. The Duke of Brittany must have a Breton governess. And our younger sons will have tutors when they are old enough. But for Margot? For any younger sisters she may have? Yes, _cherie,_ I mean it.”  
  
Little Katheryn looks round at Francis’s words, startled, but her mother, experienced courtier that she is, knows when to pretend that her sovereigns are alone in the room. She grabs Katheryn’s hand and hisses a sharp reprimand into her ear.  
  
Marie, however, is unaware of anything going on around her. Her blue eyes sparkle with tears as Francis’s words sink in. She’d almost given up hope of ever having a countrywoman at her side at Francis’s Court. Oh, little Annie is charming enough, but Marguerite has got her now. She’ll be more French than English before the year is out, there’s no doubt about it. To be granted such a boon as Maud, so completely out of the blue…  
  
“Thank you!” she squeals, leaping up to throw herself into Francis’s arms. There is such fervour in her voice that he can’t help but chuckle, even as he puts her from him gently, reminding her to have a care for the child.  
  
“I’ll leave you to get acquainted,” he laughs, and then he is gone, shouting for Francis, Count of St Pol, to come and play tennis with him.  
  
Marie waits until he is out of earshot and then spins to face Maud, beaming.  
  
“We’ll send the children straight to the nursery, and find you some clothes that aren’t unrelieved black so you don’t scare my darling Margot. And then we’ll go to the nursery so that you can meet your new charge. You mustn’t worry if she cries. She’s usually a happy little thing, but the nurses swear blind she’s been missing Madame de Foix since she was sent away. She’ll soon get used to you. Oh, and have you only brought the girls? Didn’t you and Sir Thomas have a son as well?”  
  
If Maud is disconcerted by Marie’s tactless rambling, she is too well-bred to show it. She simply nods and says, “Yes, My Lady. William. He turned 3 last week. I’ve left him fostering with Lord Latimer so that he can learn to be a proper northern gentleman.”  
  
Guilt laces Marie at the thought of Lady Parr having to leave her son behind when she came to France, but it only lasts a moment. She’s too thrilled at the thought of finally having someone of her own age to chatter in English with for any negative emotions to take root for long.  
  
She reaches out and clasps Maud’s arm.  
  
“Oh, Maud! You don’t know how good it is to finally have another Englishwoman at Court! We’re going to be the best of friends, I can tell!”  
  
Then, before Maud can so much as open her mouth to reply, Marie calls for someone to take Katheryn and Anne to the nursery and pulls Maud after her in search of a brighter gown that will fit the older woman.


End file.
